This month's Searchlite intro written by SEO Analyst, Cristiana Hawthorne
Mirroring the changing of seasons, Uproer is going through some ourselves! We are happy to share that we are growing our team (keep your eye out for their intros soon.) And that's not all - We've been fleshing out our content strategy & SEO copywriting service for some time, and are happy to share that it is in full swing.
We approach content from a data-driven perspective, rather than playing the content guessing game. The proof is in the numbers: With our SEO content strategy, an ecommerce client has seen +1,200% organic traffic Y/Y and +165% revenue Y/Y. If this sounds like something your team or someone you know could use in 2021, drop us a line.
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And speaking of growth and process, Uproer has just committed to being a sustaining donor to the Brand Lab. If you're unfamiliar with their mission, they are improving diversity and inclusion in the marketing industry through mentorship and hiring programs, and workshops. The whole team is energized and excited to be working with a group that is making huge strides to a more equitable marketing and advertising industry.
Here's what else is going on in the search world.
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by Roger Montti, Search Engine Journal
Key Takeaways:
- Google's Core Web Vital metrics (CWVs) are becoming a ranking factory in May. Many SEOs and website owners are struggling to improve them
- The burden of improving these metrics is falling on website owners when it's the CMS's that aren't adopting CWV best practices (not that they need to, Google isn't their customer)
- In time, the CMS development community may prioritize CWVs, but for now, users of these softwares are being pressured to "hack" together solutions to stay in Google's good graces
Why it Matters:
Core Web Vitals will be a ranking factor. To what degree? That is unknown. This scenario presents a challenge: How much do you invest in improving your CWVs when you don’t know the expected impact? This isn’t the first time that Google has used its massive PR power to cry “ranking factor!” Similar rollouts with mobile-friendliness and site security had minimal immediate impact on rankings. Our advice? Improving UX is never a bad thing, so do what's reasonable. But, content and links are going to remain far bigger ranking factors than Core Web Vitals. Don't pull all of your resources away from what really matters!
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by John Smith, Uproer
Key Takeaways:
- For small businesses or businesses with a local target audience, Google My Business can unlock new conversion actions and ad placements within your Google Ads account.
- This article goes over the benefits of linking the two platforms and walks you through the quick-and-easy way to level up your paid search presence with a single extension.
Why it Matters:
By leveraging location extensions through Google My Business, you can significantly improve your presence in local search and cut cost in the process. Additional conversion metrics, while not able to integrate with bid strategies, offer new insights into how customers in your locations are engaging with your business through Google Maps. If you care about calls and foot traffic to your business, location extensions through Google My Business are a surefire way to drive leads & store visits through search.
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by Jimmy Daly and Ryan Law, Animalz
Key Takeaways:
- Content decays for a variety of reasons, including increased competition in the space, content "Freshness", quality of content, SERP changes, or even an algorithm update.
- Identifying decaying content through Google Analytics is key in adding effort behind tactics that work.
- You can refresh content by expanding it, modernizing it, ensuring little optimizations are up to scratch (page titles, meta data, etc), condensing it, promoting it, and retargeting the audience.
Why it Matters:
Updating decaying content is a normal part of the internet, but your content can be a traffic driver for longer if it is refreshed. However, the only way content gets updated on a regular basis is if it's built into a workflow that works for you. So be sure to mark those calendars for GA pulls and create a workflow that helps identify struggling content.
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by Piyush Naik, Lauren Tallody, and Dianna Wu, Microsoft Advertising Blog
Key Takeaways:
- Bing has announced it will automatically transition all existing search, shopping, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns without any automated bidding strategies in place to Enhanced CPC
- This change will roll out between March 2021 and April 2021
Why it Matters:
eCPC has proven successful (and relatively popular) on Google, so we also expect these changes to bring positive results to Bing advertisers. It will also be interesting to watch how platform-wide performance shifts as the algorithms mature. This further shows that the future of PPC is -- and has been -- looking more and more automated. As we’ve said before, we’re losing granularity left and right. And there are good, privacy-focused reasons for it, but we still need to plan for changes like these before they happen. Otherwise, we’ll just be left griping about the search term reports of yesteryear and missing out on helping businesses grow.
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by fio, content folks
Key Takeaways:
- Publishing blog content that addresses pain points related to your product or service is an incredibly potent way to introduce your business to new people who didn’t know they needed you
- With this type of content, you can effectively solve the user’s problem while subtly weaving your product into the solution
- This kind of content requires extensive knowledge of both the product and the customers it serves. Because of that, it’s a difficult and under-used form of content marketing
- However, it converts better than many types of content and is extremely valuable
Why It Matters:
Product-led content should be at the forefront of any content marketing strategy that aims to actually increase conversions. It effectively solves the problem of how to get in front of an audience who needs your product but doesn’t know it yet. Because it satisfies search intent, it can and does rank well for non-brand keywords. But unlike top-of-funnel content, the business impact of product-led content tends to be more immediate and measurable. |
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Other Interesting Stories:
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Free Tools of the Month:
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Samuel Schmitt has just released an updated version of his Thruuu tool, that gives a great top-level analysis of the SERP for any given keyword.
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SERP Speed is a tool that helps you compare your page speed to your competitor's at a keyword level.
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